Just how good is Friends? The football team, not the 90s show

Friends is killing it on the field, even if that sounds like it should be against their religion.

NAIA's Friends University of Wichita, Kansas, has won its first four games 73-14, 62-7, 62-0, and 59-15. That gives them the #1 scoring offense in the country at any level. Naturally it doesn't give them the best offense, but it holds up remarkably well to schedule correction at #26. That's among all schools, even FBS.

With just four games in the season so far, early power ratings have some notable flukes, but Friends showing up in the top 100 is impressive for an NAIA school. Right now they're #75 with the #26 offense and #175 defense.

  #  Team                        rec   Rating Offense[rnk]  Defense[rnk]
 74. Boston College              1-2   48.00   55.89 [ 43]    7.89 [121]
 75. Friends                     4-0   47.73   60.28 [ 26]   12.54 [175]
 76. Tulane                      3-1   47.53   48.55 [ 94]    1.01 [ 64]

Really? Ahead of Tulane? Like I said: early unbiased power ratings are going to have some interesting outliers where the system hasn't resolved schedule strength yet. Let's look at our power ratings with pre-season bias and Bayesian updating through last week:

  #  Team                        rec   Rating Offense[rnk]  Defense[rnk]
128. Florida Atlantic            1-2   33.89   45.67 [114]   11.78 [139]
129. Friends                     4-0   33.81   48.05 [ 92]   14.24 [163]
130. Northern Arizona            3-1   33.78   47.02 [101]   13.23 [152]

An NAIA school rankings at #129 is pretty amazing. Looking at the teams they've beaten so far, they are #530 Bethany KS (2-2), #533 Avila (0-4), #485 Bethel KS (0-4), and #398 Tabor (1-3). Not the most rigorous workout, which is why they only rank #7 in the latest NAIA poll, behind such NAIA stalwarts as Grand View (IA) who ranks #382 in our updated power rating; #249 Keiser; #400 Benedictine; #341 Morningside; #315 Indiana Wesleyan (last year's victory-margin kings); and #348 Montana Tech.

In our NAIA-only power rating, Friends' opponents rank: #81, #86, #83, and #63, out of 99 listed teams. Friends comes in only at #3 there interestingly, and Grand View ranks only #25, with the rest of the poll's top 7: Keiser #4, Benedicting #18, Morningside #7, Indiana Wesleyan #16, with Montana Tech at #1.

The NAIA-only power rating often differs from the pecking order in the All-Division power rating due to lack of interplay between NAIA and other divisions. Some NAIA conferences (like Montana Tech's Frontier conference) are largely isolated, with only a game or two to link them to the rest of the football world. This makes ranking any of their teams difficult. Friends plays in the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference and has 11 scheduled games only against conference foes. And all KCAC members only play against each other. So the basis for comparison is muddled in terms of power ratings, either for NAIA-only or All-Division, they're unconnected to the rest of the network during the regular season.

So even if they keep winning like they have been, we'll have to wait until the NAIA playoff to see how good Friends really is.

Update: Last Saturday beat Evangel 53-0. No dropoff yet!